Baseball

The Cincinnati Reds are looking to win the National League Central and make a deep playoff run in 2013, so it's time to evaluate the team's offseason moves.

For the second straight offseason, the team stayed put at the winter meetings. Just like last year, the Reds made some major moves after the meetings wrapped up.

Shelby Miller has been the Cardinals organization's top prospect for the last three years or so.  Finally, in September, Cardinal fans were graced with Miller's presence on the big stage.

Shelby pitched fairly well in his first stint with the big league club. 

The Toronto Blue Jays are arguably the favorite to win the American League East.  

It's without doubt that they have had the most busy offseason of any team in Major League Baseball.

With an offseason that has already rocketed the Toronto Blue Jays to the top of the baseball world, would anyone really be surprised if general manager Alex Anthopoulos was to pull off another move?

The Boston Red Sox had their fair share of surprises and disappointments in 2012—more on the side of disappointments, though—as the club finished in the cellar of the American League East.

Although their win-loss record doesn’t reflect anything positive from last season, don’t forget that Boston was still solid in several offensive categories. The Red Sox scored the eighth-most runs, had the 10th-highest batting average and the 12th-highest slugging percentage.

It's been a quiet offseason so far for the New York Yankees. Brian Cashman and the front office only gave fans one new present for the holiday season in Kevin Youkilis (the rest, re-signing Mariano Rivera, Andy Pettitte, Hiroki Kuroda and Ichiro Suzuki, were recycled gifts).

It didn't have to be this way for the New York Mets and their fans.

Not in one of the newer, most beautiful ballparks in the game. Not in the greatest city in the world. Not now that the Wilpons are free of the Bernie Madoff disaster. Not in a season in which the eyes of the entire baseball world will be on the New York Mets in July when they play host to the Midsummer Classic.

To put it bluntly, signing Nick Swisher doesn't make the Cleveland Indians a contender for the American League Central.

Chicago White Sox general manager Rick Hahn is now dealing with a shallow pool of available free agents. Not so thin, however, that the White Sox cannot find a free-agent steal among them.

As Hahn wades through what free agents are left, there are two areas the White Sox must address.

The temptation to take an unlikely premise for success and sarcastically run with it—"throw Chase Utley in the Wayback Machine and set it to 2006" or "throw Ryan Howard 1,000,000 left-handed sliders until he is immune from their hypnotic effects"—is great.

For that matter, there is also "petition Bud Selig to move the Phillies from the National League Eastern Division, where they are third-best, to a more hospitable division like the National League Central."

But we deal in reality here.